1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pet animal body waste treating material for transforming pet animal body waste, such as urine and/or mollock (feces or solid waste ejected from the body of a live animal such as a dog, cat, and the like) into combustible waste.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there have been proposed various pet animal body waste treatments such as disposal of used body waste treating materials by flushing down the toilet irrespective of material thereof, or by separating out combustible waste and non-combustible waste to dispose like household rubbish.
Generally, a material to be used as a material of the pet animal body waste treating material, namely, ash content, such as bentonite, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), water absorbing polymer and so forth, are respectively 83.5 to 87.5%, 19.7% and 40.0%, and paper powder, particularly, ash content of a paper tube which will be discussed later, is 4.5%.
Therefore, pet animal body waste treating materials consisting of only bentonite have too much ash content and thus cannot be disposed as combustible waste. In contrast, pet animal body waste treating material made of paper for disposal as combustible waste, incurs higher material cost in comparison with that made of bentonite. Furthermore, in order to preventing flying out, the grain size of the individual treating material has to be as large as 5 to 10 mm to form a larger gap between the individual grains to make the water absorbing surface area small relative to bulk size. Accordingly, while water absorbing ability is insufficient, large block may be formed by absorption of water to require disposal of large block and thus is not economical.
The present invention has been worked out in view of the problems in the prior art set forth above. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a pet animal body waste treating material which enables disposal of pet animal body waste, such as urine, mollock or so forth, in a similar manner as household combustible waste, and which can be manufactured easily at low material cost, can satisfactorily maintain a large total water absorption area while forming relatively small block with only a portion absorbing water, and thus is quite economical.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a pet animal body waste treating material composed of a core portion, in which paper powder, powdered bentonite and water absorbing polymer are mixed, a surface layer portion coating the core portion and in which paper powder, powdered bentonite, carboxymethyl cellulose and starch are mixed.
Preferably, a mixture ratio of the paper powder, the powder state bentonite and the water absorbing polymer is 50 to 80 wt % of the paper powder, 20 to 50 wt % of the powdered bentonite and 1 to 10 wt % of water absorbing polymer, and a mixture ratio of the paper powder, the powdered bentonite, carboxymethyl cellulose and starch is 5 to 30 wt % of the paper powder, 50 to 90 wt % of bentonite, 1 to 20 wt % of carboxymethyl cellulose and 1 to 20 wt % of starch.
The grain size is 2 to 6 mm and ash content after burning may be less than or equal to 50%. The paper powder may be prepared from a paper tube as a core tube to be used for rolling a lengthy web for newspaper or so forth. Comparing the grain having the grain size of 2 to 6 mm and the fine grain having the grain size less than 2 mm in equal value in an aggregate, the fine grain is not suitable to use as the animal body waste treatment material since it has greater surface area than the former and thus can leave more than or equal to 50% of ash content as burnt in a manner similar to general household waste.
The paper powder may be prepared through a coarse crushing step by a hammer crusher type crusher and a fine crushing step by a cutter type crusher.
If the paper powder of about 1 mm required in the present invention is to be prepared by a repetitive process using only a hammer crusher type crusher and a cutter type crusher, crushing cannot be efficiently performed since the paper tube contains adhesive, such as polyvinyl acetate emulsion adhesive which would increase manufacturing cost.
Furthermore, the paper powder prepared using only hammer crusher type crusher, for example, has relatively high scuffing of fiber due to the presence of polyvinyl acetate emulsion adhesive. However, scuffing of the paper fiber inherently promotes intertwining or clumping to make it difficult to uniformly mix with other powder, namely, powdered bentonite, water absorbing polymer, starch or so forth Static charge is also a factor which should be considered.
A paper tube to be used for rolling a lengthy substance, such as a web for newspaper is, at first, coarsely crushed in coarse crushing step into a paper piece of about 10 cm2 by a hammer crusher type crusher at a first stage and crushed into paper piece of the size about one tenth of the paper piece crushed in the first stage, at a second stage. Then, the paper piece is subject to a fine crushing step to form a paper powder of about 1 mm diameter by a cutter type crusher.
The paper powder thus obtained has extremely small scuffing of fiber and may not intertwine or clump. This facilitates uniform mixing of the paper powder with the powdered bentonite, the water absorbing polymer, starch or so froth.
By this, static charge which can be caused easily in mixing respective powders in dry condition as in the prior art, can be avoided to facilitate uniform mixing with other powders.
The paper powder is a an indispensable material for providing water absorbing ability and combustion ability of the pet animal body waste treating material. In order to obtain the paper powder, it is most economical to take the paper tube, namely core tube to be used for rolling a lengthy substance, such as a web for newspaper. The paper tube is manufactured by stacking a plurality of cardboard material paper using an adhesive, such as polyvinyl acetate emulsion adhesive, forming into a tubular shape of a predetermined diameter, and adjusting the thickness to obtain the desired strength,
The powdered bentonite is suitable as inexpensive material for pelletizing the paper powder. However, if the blending ratio of the powdered bentonite is too much, combustion ability of the pet animal body waste treating material of the present invention can be degraded. The inventors have studied and determined the amount of the powdered bentonite to be blended in the pet animal body waste treating material under the premise that when ash content after burning is less than or equal to 50%, such waste can be disposed of as the general household combustible waste. As a result, preferred content is found that the powdered bentonite and the water absorbing polymer is 50 to 80 wt % of the paper powder, 20 to 50 wt % of the powdered bentonite and 1 to 10 wt % of water absorbing polymer in the mixture of the core portion, and the powder state bentonite, carboxymethyl cellulose and starch is 5 to 30 wt % of the paper powder, 50 to 90 wt % of powdered bentonite, 1 to 20 wt % of carboxymethyl cellulose and 1 to 20 wt % of starch in the surface layer portion.
On the other hand, since the pet animal body waste treating material according to the present invention takes the paper tube as material of the paper powder, polyvinyl acetate plastic is inherently contained therein. This degrades water absorbing ability.
However, due to small scuffing of fiber of the paper powder, binding between fiber in the grain is weak which easily causes swelling in the powdered bentonite and water absorbing polymer when contacted with moisture.
When forming block by aggregating the adjacent grains as by contacting with moisture, caking ability is not high since only powdered bentonite and the water absorbing polymer react. However, since the paper powder is contained in the surface layer portion, the paper powder also causes swelling with penetration into the powdered bentonite and the starch which promotes bonding of adjacent grains to form a kind of binding structure for maintaining strong caking ability for a long period after contacting with the moisture.
In order to balance and enhance the foregoing effects, the paper powder in the surface layer portion has to have lower binding ability and lower density than that of the paper powder in the core portion. To achieve this, the grain has double layer structure consisting of the core portion and the surface layer portion. Further 50 to 80 wt % of paper powder is provided in the core portion and 5 to 30 wt % of the paper powder is provided in the surface layer portion.